The GPU block that wouldn't die

[THRESHIN]

About 15 years ago I built my first WC setup. I bought two swiftech MCW60's off the forum's here and put them on two Nvidia 7900 GTO's in SLI. Worked great, eventually upgraded and decided not to do SLI again so sold one of the blocks. So check this out:

Over 15 years later in still using it. That's the same block that I managed to attach to my new AMD 6700XT last night. Works great, stays below 50C.

So far that block has cooled a 7900GTO, AMD HD 4870, HD 5770, HD 6850, GTX 970 and now the 6700XT.

I can't even remember what I paid for it but it wasn't much. Best investment I ever made.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

That is awesome. Nothing beats quality.

That said, are you not concerned about VRM and ram temps? This is the reason I've always gone with full cover blocks.

 

[THRESHIN]

Actually no, note the heatsinks. Also what you don't see is I've put a 120mm fan right up to the card

Lessons from the past

 

[pendragon1]

That said, are you not concerned about VRM and ram temps?

air flow over the vrm is usually enough, and with the ram-sinks that will be fine too. its how my 5700 runs.

 

[hititnquitit]

I've got a couple of the white version I picked up from sidewinder for $20ea, right before their going out of business sale. Ones still in the box, the other is on one of my old gtx580s. Still have a box of those sexy copper bga sinks as well Swiftech knew what they were doing when they made the mcw60. Best universal blocks ever.
What I used to do, is get an Arctic accelero extreme III gpu hsf for my backup card and when I converted that rig to water the mcw60 was a perfect drop in replacement. Heatsinks didn't have to be adjusted at all, just drop it in, hook up the tubing and zip tie a 120 to the card.

Great post OP!

 

[THRESHIN]

so an interesting update with this one. i've gone back to the stock air cooler. it feels weird, i haven't had an air cooled video card in over 15 years.

here's what happened. i made some changes since that pic was taken, the big silver voltage regs had heatsinks. had problems cooling the VRM chips....issue is they're about half the width of those copper ram sinks and there's some small resistors right next to them that are a little higher making attaching the heatsinks an absolute nightmare. eventually i lined up the row of heatsinks with thermal tape only covering half the width (over the resistors). used a thermal pad on top of the VRMs just like stock cooling. attached them with a small amount of super glue on the resistors. seemed to hold and conduct heat well.

except i kept getting occasional crashes....i do folding and i found i'd get a crash every couple of days. GPU was well cooled at under 50ºC tops.

so went back to the stock cooler and magic....it's just fine. working night right now, but it'll have been running furmark AND folding at full for 3 days in the morning when i get home.

i'm a little confused as to what is going on here. could be those problematic VRMs were in fact not as well cooled as i had thought? or, i wonder if this was absence of thermal throttling. keeping the GPU temp lower, would it run at a higher clock for longer? can anyone think of something else i've missed?

on a side note, i have been quite impressed with the stock air cooler. it's actually very quiet, far cry from the older ones i remember. so now i'm wondering if i should bother with water cooling the GPU. it runs fairly quiet and from what i'm seeing with modern GPUs overclocking is very limited. seems around 5% give or take on air. might be able to squeeze a little more with water if it worked right. not sure it's worth it.

however, if i attempt this again i have an idea. instead of a 120mm fan up to the card, remove stock heatsink and put the stock fan overtop. i could force a fan speed with the drivers to just be on at all times since it wouldn't be GPU based. the fan has standoffs that raise the fan off the card (for the heatsink) and is screwed to the metal backplate. pretty sure i can fit that water block under the fan, add nylon washers if it needs more.

anyhow, any thoughts appreciated.

 

[xDiVolatilX]

It's pretty cool that you were able to attach a block from a completely different GPU. That's the definition of having a "rig". You literally rigged it yourself lol. Good work.

 

[THRESHIN]

It's pretty cool that you were able to attach a block from a completely different GPU. That's the definition of having a "rig". You literally rigged it yourself lol. Good work.

well ultimately it failed so i'm not sure i'd call it good work as of yet.

it's an old universal GPU block. been adapting it to cards for years now.